Causality in Early Modern Philosophy

Causality in Early Modern Philosophy PDF Author: Cruz González-Ayesta
Publisher: Georg Olms Verlag
ISBN: 9783487150352
Category : Causation
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
At the beginning of the Modern Age, two important changes occur in relation to the understanding of causality. On one hand, there is a reduction of the four Aristotelian causes to the efficient one. On the other hand, causality passes from an ontological to an epistemological register. Much ground has been covered from the fourfold consideration of the cause as constitutive and explanatory of beings and their movements, to the conception of cause as the relation between two events whose reality and epistemological validity (or necessity) must be justified. This book seeks to tell part of that story. Eight authors are studied from a historical viewpoint: Suárez, Bacon, Boyle, Hobbes, Descartes, Pascal, Spinoza, and Leibniz. From a systematic viewpoint, the contributions gathered herein can be arranged in keeping with the three realms of inquiry that correspond to the threefold angle according to which Descartes develops his explanation of causality: the interaction between bodies, the interaction between body and soul, and the causal relationship between God and finite substances.

Causality in Early Modern Philosophy

Causality in Early Modern Philosophy PDF Author: Cruz González-Ayesta
Publisher: Georg Olms Verlag
ISBN: 9783487150352
Category : Causation
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
At the beginning of the Modern Age, two important changes occur in relation to the understanding of causality. On one hand, there is a reduction of the four Aristotelian causes to the efficient one. On the other hand, causality passes from an ontological to an epistemological register. Much ground has been covered from the fourfold consideration of the cause as constitutive and explanatory of beings and their movements, to the conception of cause as the relation between two events whose reality and epistemological validity (or necessity) must be justified. This book seeks to tell part of that story. Eight authors are studied from a historical viewpoint: Suárez, Bacon, Boyle, Hobbes, Descartes, Pascal, Spinoza, and Leibniz. From a systematic viewpoint, the contributions gathered herein can be arranged in keeping with the three realms of inquiry that correspond to the threefold angle according to which Descartes develops his explanation of causality: the interaction between bodies, the interaction between body and soul, and the causal relationship between God and finite substances.

Causation and Cognition in Early Modern Philosophy

Causation and Cognition in Early Modern Philosophy PDF Author: Dominik Perler
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351379380
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
This book re-examines the roles of causation and cognition in early modern philosophy. The standard historical narrative suggests that early modern thinkers abandoned Aristotelian models of formal causation in favor of doctrines that appealed to relations of efficient causation between material objects and cognizers. This narrative has been criticized in recent scholarship from at least two directions. Scholars have emphasized that we should not think of the Aristotelian tradition in such monolithic terms, and that many early modern thinkers did not unequivocally reduce all causation to efficient causation. In line with this general approach, this book features original essays written by leading experts in early modern philosophy. It is organized around five guiding questions: What are the entities involved in causal processes leading to cognition? What type(s) or kind(s) of causality are at stake? Are early modern thinkers confined to efficient causation or do other types of causation play a role? What is God's role in causal processes leading to cognition? How do cognitive causal processes relate to other, non-cognitive causal processes? Is the causal process in the case of human cognition in any way special? How does it relate to processes involved in the case of non-human cognition? The essays explore how fifteen early modern thinkers answered these questions: Francisco Suárez, René Descartes, Louis de la Forge, Géraud de Cordemoy, Nicolas Malebranche, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch de Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Ralph Cudworth, Margaret Cavendish, John Locke, John Sergeant, George Berkeley, David Hume, and Thomas Reid. The volume is unique in that it explores both well-known and understudied historical figures, and in that it emphasizes the intimate relationship between causation and cognition to open up new perspectives on early modern philosophy of mind and metaphysics.

Causation and Modern Philosophy

Causation and Modern Philosophy PDF Author: Keith Allen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136820051
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
This volume brings together a collection of new essays by leading scholars on the subject of causation in the early modern period, from Descartes to Lady Mary Shepherd. Aimed at researchers, graduate students and advanced undergraduates, the volume advances the understanding of early modern discussions of causation, and situates these discussions in the wider context of early modern philosophy and science. Specifically, the volume contains essays on key early modern thinkers, such as Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Kant. It also contains essays that examine the important contributions to the causation debate of less widely discussed figures, including Louis la Forge, Thomas Brown and Lady Mary Shepherd.

Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy

Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy PDF Author: Walter Ott
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191571407
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Some philosophers think physical explanations stand on their own: what happens, happens because things have the properties they do. Others think that any such explanation is incomplete: what happens in the physical world must be partly due to the laws of nature. Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy examines the debate between these views from Descartes to Hume. Ott argues that the competing models of causation in the period grow out of the scholastic notion of power. On this Aristotelian view, the connection between cause and effect is logically necessary. Causes are 'intrinsically directed' at what they produce. But when the Aristotelian view is faced with the challenge of mechanism, the core notion of a power splits into two distinct models, each of which persists throughout the early modern period. It is only when seen in this light that the key arguments of the period can reveal their true virtues and flaws. To make his case, Ott explores such central topics as intentionality, the varieties of necessity, and the nature of relations. Arguing for controversial readings of many of the canonical figures, the book also focuses on lesser-known writers such as Pierre-Sylvain Régis, Nicolas Malebranche, and Robert Boyle.

Causation in Early Modern Philosophy

Causation in Early Modern Philosophy PDF Author: Steven Nadler
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271039663
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description


Causality and Mind

Causality and Mind PDF Author: Nicholas Jolley
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199669554
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
This text presents 17 of Nicholas Jolley's essays on early modern philosophy. They focus on two main themes: the debate over the nature of causality; and the issues posed by Descartes' innovations in the philosophy of mind. Together, they show that philosophers in the period are systematic critics of their contemporaries and predecessors.

The Causation Debate in Modern Philosophy, 1637-1739

The Causation Debate in Modern Philosophy, 1637-1739 PDF Author: Kenneth Clatterbaugh
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317828119
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
The Causation Debate in Modern Philosophy examines the debate that began as modern science separated itself from natural philosophy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The book specifically explores the two dominant approaches to causation as a metaphysical problem and as a scientific problem.

On Efficient Causality

On Efficient Causality PDF Author: Francisco Suárez
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300060072
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
The Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suarez (1548-1617) was an eminent philosopher and theologian whose Disputationes Metaphysicae was first published in Spain in 1597 and was widely studied throughout Europe during the seventeenth century. The Disputationes Metaphysicae had a great influence on the development of early modern philosophy and on such well-known figures as Descartes and Leibniz. This is the first time that Disputations 17, 18, and 19 have been translated into English. The Metaphysical Disputations provide an excellent philosophical introduction to the medieval Aristotelian discussion of efficient causality. The work constitutes a synthesis of monumental proportions: problematic issues are lucidly delineated and the various arguments are laid out in depth. Disputations 17, 18, and 19 deal explicitly with such issues as the nature of causality, the types of efficient causes, the prerequisites for causal action, causal contingency, human free choice, and chance.

Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy

Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy PDF Author: Walter R. Ott
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
This is a study of one of the most important debates in 17th- and 18th-century philosophy: the nature of causation. Ott offers controversial readings of such canonical figures as Descartes, Locke, and Hume, and explores related topics such as intentionality, necessity, and relations.

The Interpretation of Early Modern Philosophy

The Interpretation of Early Modern Philosophy PDF Author: Paul Taborsky
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527526828
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 159

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Book Description
What is early modern philosophy? Two interpretative trends have predominated in the related literature. One, with roots in the work of Hegel and Heidegger, sees early modern thinking either as the outcome of a process of gradual rationalization (leading to the principle of sufficient reason, and to “ontology” as distinct from metaphysics), or as a reflection of an inherent subjectivity or representational semantics. The other sees it as reformulations of medieval versions of substance and cause, suggested by, or leading to, early modern scientific developments. This book proposes a rather different kind of explanation. It suggests that the concept of relation, specifically that of dyadic, anti-symmetrical relations, can throw light on a wide variety of developments in early modern thought, such as those concerning causality, sense perception, temporality, and the mereological approach to substance. The book argues that these relations are grounded in an interpretation of causal influence, and not in semantic theories or subjectivity. Furthermore, if it is correct that the problem of unity was, for most of classical antiquity, what the problems of motion, causality and perception were for early modern thinkers, then early modern thought is much closer to the thought of Aristotle than is commonly supposed. The genesis of early modern thought might instead be taken to have occurred in opposition to one aspect of the thought of Duns Scotus (an aspect that lives on in contemporary Neo-Aristotelianism), and that can be explained once the relational perspective examined here is taken into account.